That’s all, I’ve just had it. With women, mostly, for the last sixteen years going all the way back to the first woman I ever dated. I’ve had it with other things, too, but I’ve had it with women especially.

Now I was raised by (and with) women, so I’m not naturally a chauvinist. But I’ll be damned if I haven’t been taught very well to be one by the women I’ve known.

I don’t know. Maybe things are just getting to me tonight, who knows. But I’ve had it. Had it.

—

Ladies, there are four ways to win a man’s love:

1. Be the one person in the world against whom he doesn’t need to defend himself. Make him feel as though he can be honest with you about his hopes, dreams, and fears (because there aren’t many, if any, other places where he can talk about such things).

2. Tell him that you need him, tell him in what ways, and then let him be there for you, even if you probably can do it all yourself.

3. Tell everyone that you’re with him, and show him that you’re proud and glad to have him, as though he’s the best man in the room (even if you know he’s not—and if that’s the case, never ever let him suspect that he’s not).

4. Spend lots of time acknowledging his personhood.

There are also three ways to lose a man’s love:

1. Take him for granted, fail to appreciate the sacrifices that he makes for you, or expect him to continue to make world-shattering sacrifices to the point of self-annihilation, especially if you’re not world-shatteringly thankful each time.

2. Let him feel as though other people might think him an utter fool for staying with you, or worse, as though other people might be making fun of him for staying with you.

3. Test his love to see if it’s real and/or watch for gaps in his love so closely that you wear out his patience utterly by making him feel as though he’s always failing an exam.

4. Spend lots of time accusing him of not acknowledging your personhood.

—

Too often I’ve heard women say that for men, all women are interchangeable, we see them as nothing other than a warm body and an empty head, we don’t notice any difference between them or see any of their individuality, blah, blah, blah.

Ladies: if this were so, we sure as hell wouldn’t sit still and listen to a woman say this shit to our face. We would just move on to the next woman over who was cheap, easy, and quiet as hell so that we didn’t have to hear it yet again, ad infinitium. But it’s not so. We sit there and listen to you berate us about this shit precisely because we want to be with you and we’re even willing to let you throw all this shit in our face, if necessary, in order to spend a little time with the ones we love.

But dammit we have limits. And sometimes women sail dangerously near the wind. And they’re somehow always shocked and dismayed when they realize that they have destroyed a man’s love utterly, for no reason at all.

—

What is this perverse desire in women to say, “Hmm… I wonder what is the precise point at which he will tire of me completely? I won’t be able to rest until I find out…”

Women. I’m sorry, but they’re all the same. And in perfect chorus, they all scream out “No, we’re not, you bastard, you cheavenistic man!” And then every one of the women in my life—this happens every time I say the phrase “every one of the women in my life”—writes me the very same stupid pissed off email message saying “Aron, (a) I am not just another one of the women in your life, and (b) I’m not pissed off, so that disproves your point.”

The fact that they felt the need to write the damn message in the first place having proved it already, of course. It’s not that men aren’t all the same, too. We are. We just admit it. Revel in it, even. Have a beer and watch the game and say “God, isn’t it great that we men are so boring that we can just enjoy the simple things in life together, all the same?” And we do. And we don’t complain.

But women… They always complain. And they’re convinced that their complaints are very personal and unique to their own goddess aura or whatever the fuck. But they always have the same complaints. It always starts with danger and testosterone. Men are dangerous and testosterone-laden. Men aren’t nice, they’re violent and untrustworthy and dangerous. So in order to try and assuage their fears and complaints and show them that men can be caring and generous, one tries doubly hard to be nice. No good, because of course after the first nice thing we try to do, suddenly we’re spineless and we don’t take initiative. So we say to ourselves “Well, bollocks, I just won’t bother, if she wants it my way, we’ll do it my way” and we use our initiative and then they throw tantrums and say that we don’t allow them to have an opinion or input of any kind and we don’t listen to what they say. So we ask them their opinion and they say we’re putting pressure on them and after all why are we always asking when we should already know if we really care and really what is with all this asking for their thoughts anyway, are we expecting them to tell us what to do? Are we hoping that they’ll mother us? So we do our best to do something that we think they’ll be happy with without seeming too initiative-happy but also without actually first asking what they’d like and then of course we’re just trying so hard because we want to flatter them and get them into bed (and of course we got it wrong anyway). So we try our best to avoid making noises toward physicality or seeming to be too affectionate so that they don’t think we’re “just after one thing” and can see that we respect their minds as well… and then of course they’re angry because we’re not paying attention to them and we don’t love them any more. And so we throw up our hands and yell “OH MY GOD, THIS IS SO STOOOOOPID!” and kick a garbage can over, and it’s right back where we started: “See, you men are dangerous, you can’t control your emotions. You’re violent and full of testosterone. No wonder there’s so much war in the world and so many women are constantly being abused. You’re incapable of being nice.”

Wash, rinse, repeat.

And most of all, they say that they don’t want to change us. Hahahahahahaha. Haha.

To all of the women I’ve dated that are going to write me now angrily demanding (in their own unique way, not at all the same as the others, of course) that I take it down: well… no. Learn to actually deal with something for a change without leaning on (or yelling at) a guy.